memory_alphafandomcom-20200223-history
Talk:Zora
Identifier of Hurston's race Apologies for creating a previously deleted page here, but with this conversation coming up more than once, it seems useful to have a record of it. A post just came up on the forums asking why the word "negro" is used on this page, in place of African American or some other alternative. Checking the editing history, the rationale has been raised that we're quoting - or at least using the suggestion of - the identifier used when Hurtson is mentioned in the show. I'm of the mind that this makes sense in the article for Zora Neale Hurston itself, where context can be given explaining the "historical" use of the term. On a disambiguation page, however, where we don't have the space to explain its use, it currently comes off as out-of-touch at best and offensive at worst (as the person in forums suggested.) In terms of wiki policy, I think this has something to do with the increased presence of an "editorial voice" on disambiguation pages - the page is pure wiki infrastructure, written in service of this project and less in service of the project's mission, and therefore reflects more upon us as editors than it does upon the various Zora's that the page disambiguates. Without any substantive content from Trek (i.e. plot summaries or quotes), it reads as being more steeped in or colored by the opinion of present-day editors than a regular article would. The current version makes it seem like we - as an editing community - still use the term negro to refer to black people. I think we have a responsibility to update it on the disambiguation page. --JasonDanielBoxer (talk) 15:17, September 29, 2019 (UTC) :I agree, especially as the introductory paragraph of Zora Neale Hurston proper identifies her as "an African-American author", and uses "Negro" only in the context of Benny Russell's words. I think that a disambiguation page should use terminology that's helpful to the real-word user, not stick obstinately to an in-universe perspective when doing so (without context) is potentially offensive. :As a side note: as I understand it, this is not actually a forum monitored by MA's administrators, just a chat area created by Fandom's software. MA's forums are here. But that's not immediately apparent to new or casual readers, and we should probably do something about that. —Josiah Rowe (talk) 16:28, September 29, 2019 (UTC) ::To address the use of the "N" word here, the logic behind it was simply that it was how it was referred to in the context of the show. Personally, I'm ambivalent as to keeping it or changing it. To be frank, on the disambiguation page, it could likely be simplified to just "an Earth author from the 20th century" and still be just as useful. ::To address the "forum" thing? It was something pushed on MA, and as far as I know, very few editors actually look at it, ever. It is nothing more than a chat area (as Josiah Rowe notes) and because there's a big "discuss" on the top and a bigger "discussions" bit on the bottom, people tend to be pushed there, despite those conversations never actually being relevant to the wiki itself. -- sulfur (talk) 19:31, September 29, 2019 (UTC)